For decades during the 20th Century, the City of Fort Myers dumped lime sludge—a byproduct of the water treatment processes—in Dunbar, a predominately black neighborhood near downtown. Last year, tests were done on the dumpsite and high arsenic levels were discovered. Tuesday, the city council was briefed on an assessment of the site and what options the city has.

Not long after an investigative story appeared in the Fort Myers News Press, a “no trespassing” sign appeared on what was once considered public land in the heart of the Fort Myers’ Dunbar neighborhood.

That newspaper report found that the city dumped toxic sludge there 50 years ago, didn’t tell any of the neighbors, and haven’t cordoned off the area or cleaned it up.

CORRECTION: WGCU originally wrote, "Acquaviva did not return WGCU’s calls for comment," but it should read "call."

Lee County is once again looking for the chemical arsenic on Pine Island. That’s after documents surfaced from a few years ago showing arsenic levels hundreds and sometimes thousands of times higher than the federal government allows on private and public lands.

Ninety percent of all drinking water in Florida comes from wells. So it is a significant concern that a pesticide containing arsenic is still being sprayed on golf courses and other grassy areas, and finds its way into the groundwater.

The Environmental Protection Agency set about trying to ban MSMA from the market in 2006. But Congress, under pressure from the industry, blocked that action time and again, eventually taking the project away from EPA altogether.

Faucets with filtering devices appeared to reduce arsenic levels in Hernando County homes known to have tainted well water. The four-month Department of Health study compared urine levels of residents in homes with arsenic-laced wells to those whose wells had safe levels, according to the Tampa Bay Times.